


Past and Future

by ponderinfrustration



Series: Aftermath [7]
Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms, Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, M/M, Next Generation, Post-Canon, Smoking, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-17
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2019-07-13 15:22:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 16,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16020656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ponderinfrustration/pseuds/ponderinfrustration
Summary: The events of September 1917 permanently affected the De Chagny family. Letters, telegrams, worry, and hope are all part of life for them, and the war marches inevitably on.





	1. Konstin, May 1917

**Author's Note:**

> This is a collection of ficlets written in the Wraiths of Wandering 'verse. The first is pre-Wraiths and the remainder are all set afterwards, because I've never felt finished with that 'verse.
> 
> These ficlets are all also appearing in chronological order.
> 
> Some notes for those unfamiliar with this 'verse: Konstin is the son of Christine and Erik. Erik died before he was born, and when he was 16 Christine married Raoul, and had two more children, Anja and Émile. Antoine is Konstin's lover, and is also the son of Philippe and Sorelli. He has a twin brother, Guillaume, and a younger sister, Marguerite. Wraiths centred on Konstin and Antoine being badly wounded in the war, and on Marguerite falling in love with a Captain under Konstin's command, Edouard Dupuis, who was also badly wounded. 
> 
> And if you haven't read Wraiths yet, and I really hope you will!

“Two letters for you, sir.” Dupuis’ voice is soft, and out of the side of his eye Konstin sees him sort through the bundle on the table, dividing them into piles. “Make that three.”

Konstin fights to suppress a smile as he wipes off the last of the shaving cream. If he could will it to have letters every day he would. Letters are better than telegrams and memos, less likely to be orders of some sort and infinitely more likely to have something from Antoine.

Antoine. There hasn’t been a word from him in the last five days and Konstin has tried to put it down to general busy-ness, but still anxiety flickers in his heart. Antoine’s behind the lines or should be, he’s supposed to be safe, there’s no need for the sudden tightness in Konstin’s throat but it’s there anyway, clawing at him, whispering that just because Antoine _should_ be safe it doesn’t mean he _is_ safe and any variety of things can have changed. There could be word of a coming advance for Christ’s sake! Antoine could be in a hundred different shades of danger for all he knows!

The piercing squeal of a shell overhead and he instinctively flinches, his train of thought cut off, though the crash is far off, somewhere else, and only some flakes of dirt fall from the dugout ceiling. Mentally he shakes himself as he fixes his collar.

It is not Antoine in the front line just now.

That line of thought is emphatically not productive, and he pushes it away, combing back his hair. Damn but he needs to get it trimmed again. How can he be expected to berate his men for having hair longer than regulation when his own is getting out of line? It simply will not do.

Finally, satisfied that he is suitably shaved and presented, he turns around to face the table.

Dupuis has a letter laid out in front of him, and he nods towards the coffeepot without looking up. “It’s still warm.”

“And how are the men?” Always a dangerous question, and Konstin keeps his face impassive as he asks. But Dupuis is used to his asking by now, and makes a noncommittal sound.

“Much the same.” A beat, filled only with the faint thundering of distant artillery, muffled by the clay of the walls. “Henri is troubled about the rum ration. He suspects it’s somewhat lower than it ought to be.”

Possibly just a miscalculation, and it is a quiet sector, but they still have four days scheduled up here. It would not do to run out of rum. “Look into it, won’t you?”

“Of course.”

The coffee is only moderately warm, not enough to give him the kick he needs to get him into the morning. He reaches into his pocket and finds a stray cigarette, and by the time it has reached his lips, Dupuis is passing him a match. He accepts it, and withdraws his cigarette case, takes one out and lights it as well as his own, passes it over to Dupuis.

All part of the morning ritual.

His eyes flutter closed as he inhales deeply, the smoke drifting down, down into his lungs, flowing through his windpipe and bronchi, webbing out and out into each space. A sketch in one of his father’s books comes to him, a set of lungs and all the blood vessels and alveoli webbing out like the branches and leaves on a tiny tree. A beautifully inked piece of art, and somewhere inside of him at this very moment, smoke is winding through that scene.

(Nadir told him, once, long ago, about his father giving up smoking opium out of a fear that it would damage his voice, and Konstin can certainly understand that sentiment but smoking cigarettes is hardly the worst thing that can happen to his lungs now.)

He sighs and opens his eyes, and finally looks to the little bundle of letters before him, that Dupuis has so carefully set aside. On top is one from his mother, her writing a sweet echo from home that makes his throat tighten. It’s only a few weeks since he left her, since it was Émile’s birthday, and he hugged his little brother before he had to go, and tried not to let him see him cry. He traces his fingers lightly over his name, written in that so familiar hand that he would know anywhere, even in the darkest night, and carefully lifts the letter to see the one underneath.

Marguerite. She has a distinct way of curling the D of his surname, a certain defiant elegance that is so classically  _her_  that he can’t help but smile to see it. He always intends to make a trip to the château-cum-hospital where she’s stationed, but between parades and official functions and letter writing and inspections he never seems to have the time when he’s out of the lines, and it’s all he can do sometimes just to make arrangements to take tea with Antoine. Next time, maybe, he might get to fit it in. Or the time after that. It might give the men heart if he came calling on them.

And he sets Marguerite’s letter aside for later, so he has some new reading material in the wait for the next strafe.

And then there it is. The familiar writing he has dreamt of. The distinct emphasis on the K as if it is scored a little deeper, the flow to the base of the E, the flourish on his rank. Antoine. A magical, blessed, sacred letter from Antoine.

He draws a shuddering breath, tries not to see Dupuis’ glance of concern, and then with careful fingers picks up the letter and opens it.

Still alive. Still safe. And he is too relieved to be truly able to take in any words, to truly appreciate that here is a letter from Antoine, here is a sheet of paper he touched, here are the words that sprung forth from his mind for Konstin’s eyes and Konstin’s eyes only, everything considered in his careful way so that they fit perfectly together.

If it were not for the fact of Dupuis, if it were not for the fact that anyone could walk in and see him, he would kiss the page these words are written on, as if somehow Antoine might be able to feel it. But he can only hold it with all the gentleness he possesses, and pray that that will be enough.

It is the words at the bottom that catch his eye, the lines written in Russian. Antoine’s Russian is always a treat, the hushed way it drifts off his tongue, and reading the words it is as if he might be here, whispering low in Konstin’s ear.

_I love you dearly, always, with all my heart, and every night I dream of when your fingers will comb through my hair again, and when your lips will press lightly to mine, and when you will sing softly in my ear a song you have written wholly for me. They are only dreams, now, but soon, I pray, they will be reality. Go well, my love._

He is powerless to stop the tears that spring to his eyes, and he blinks them back hard as he swallows, and folds the letter again, settling it safely inside his cigarette case. Later he will savour every word of it, will read it and read it until the paper threatens to come apart at the crease and the words are embedded in his very soul, but for now he can only swallow, and smooth his fingers over the paper, before he carefully closes the case and slips it carefully under his uniform, right next to his heart.

(And somewhere behind the lines, Antoine is doing the same, in the privacy of his office, is kissing the paper filled with Konstin’s angled script, and folding it carefully, infinitely carefully, so that it may live in a cigarette case pressed to his skin. It is the closest thing they have to touching now, and for the moment it will have to do.)

Dupuis raises his eyebrows as he looks up at Konstin, and Konstin musters a smile for him, and prays his façade will not give him away.

“All is well.” And the lie is only half a lie, and well is never enough, but for now he will cling to it and all that it promises, and hope that someday soon the Russian will truly be a voice in his ear, and not merely a memory.


	2. February 1918

“You’re getting very wifely,” Antoine murmurs into his mouth, and Konstin suppresses a chuckle, smiles against him as he finishes adjusting his collar.

“Sending my man back to the Front? It’s my duty.” He pats down Antoine’s uniform and nods, satisfied. God, but he doubts Antoine has ever looked so distinguished in his uniform before, so handsome. It is enough to make him want to take him back to bed, and he might, if time were not so short.

He has tried not to think of Antoine going back there, tried not to dwell on it. But the hour is almost upon them when Antoine will have to slip away, will have to say goodbye to his parents and board the train, and they will see each other at the station but he is not ready for it. He is so very far from ready from it, and some part of him knows that he would never be ready to send Antoine back, but if he could just keep him, could just have him, for another few hours, another day, another week, maybe it would ease the aching in his heart, the twisting of his gut.

(He knows even as he thinks it that the aching will never ease, not until this _fucking_ war ends, if it ever does, if they are not old men by then, and he’s so sick of it, so sick of being afraid, so sick of worrying.)

If he is not careful he will cry, every tear he has held in for the last three days since Antoine got his orders will come spilling out, and he’ll sink to his knees a weeping sobbing mess and not be able to get up again.

He leans heavily on his cane as if it might be enough to steady him, and Antoine’s arms wrap around his waist, pull him close.

“I won’t tell you not to worry,” his voice is muffled by Konstin’s jumper, the words just a little rough, “because we both know it’s futile and you will anyway. But just—try to keep your head busy, all right? Translate all those damn documents a hundred times, and if I come home and you haven’t a symphony composed, I’m going to be so cross with you, I swear.”

His eyes are wet but he huffs a laugh. “Maybe they’ll re-assign me to a training camp somewhere and I won’t have time to compose.”

“And if they do that then I’ll be very cross with them.”

Antoine pulls back, gaze meeting his and it takes his breath away. Those brown eyes have never been so deep, so sad, so cavernous, and he might almost fall into them, would bury himself in them if he could, but then the moment passes, and the sadness is replaced with a glint, a hand curling around the nape of his neck, drawing him down, down.

His heart throbs painfully when their lips meet, but he sighs into that kiss, tastes sweet honeyed tea and the faint bitterness of the whiskey that they each took a shot of, and his eyes flicker closed, thoughts stuttering to a stop, the whole world come down to this, to these lips, to this warm body pressed to him, to the hand on the back of his neck, the heart he can feel throbbing through the layers of the uniform.

His cheeks are wet, but whether the tears are his or Antoine’s, he cannot tell.

They draw back, breathless, and Antoine does not smile now, but grasps his hand and kisses the back of his knuckles.

“For luck.”

The words are the softest he has ever heard, and there a thousand things he would say, a thousand promises, a thousand admonishments to be careful and not do anything reckless, but they have said them a thousand times already, and Antoine is blurred by the tears trickling down his cheeks, and he kisses his forehead, kisses his hair, Antoine’s head back pressed to his chest as he whispers, “I know, my love, I know, I know.”

And what other words they share in the muffled silence are shrouded by the soft ticking of the clock.

* * *

 

It is worse the second time, sending his son away. A hundred, a thousand times worse. Before, when Antoine first went to the Front, Philippe could tell himself that the war would be over before they all knew it. And each time he returned after leave, Philippe could tell himself that those things happen to other men, to someone else’s sons and not his.

But on this cold February morning, standing on the train station platform with Sorelli at his side as they send Antoine back after his convalescence, there is no such comfort in illusions. Any illusions were stripped away when he was wounded, when they had to send Guillaume back afterwards even as Antoine still lay in hospital.

And it is only a cold comfort to think that for now he will be behind the lines.

Philippe has become practiced at keeping his face impassive, at willing his eyes to stay dry. It is a skill he taught himself when Raoul was only a boy and over the course of this whole long miserable war he has had too much time to perfect it.

Too much time.

And not enough time, now. Only five minutes until the train is pulling out, carrying Antoine away from them again for who knows how long. And Antoine is a man, so much a man, but he will always be a boy, and Philippe feels the first stirrings of tears behind his eyes and wills them to stay put as he stretches out his hand, and Antoine clasps it, shakes it and nods, but Philippe does not let go, not yet.

“Be good.” He would say _be careful_ , would say _keep out of trouble_ , would say _don’t get yourself blown up_ , would say so many things but they’re all futile, and he cannot control what Antoine will do, what he might have to do, what will happen to him, and the words all dry like dust in his throat.

“I’ll do what I can.” Beneath the words are a thousand promises that catch in Philippe’s heart, and he nods, and swallows, and squeezes Antoine’s hand once more before he drops it, and closes his eyes, the tears still threatening beneath the surface.

For all he knows, this is the last time he will ever see his son.

No. He will not think like that, not now. Later he can dwell on it, when he is alone in his study, with only his cognac as witness. He will not give in to such possibilities when his son is still alive and well in front of him.

A low murmur of voices, and he blinks the crowded platform back into view. Beside him Antoine is releasing his mother, kissing her cheek, and Sorelli leans up to return the kiss, and smooths her hand over his lapel, before she gives him one sharp nod and stands back, her hand gentle squeezing Philippe’s arm.

A remarkable woman, his Sorelli. So strong and self-contained though he knows her own tears are there, hidden away. They talked about it last night, when the house was quiet, when Antoine was away with Konstin and could not possibly hear them.

Konstin. He is here, too. Balanced on his cane, standing between his mother and Raoul. And Antoine leans down and hugs Christine, and then shakes Raoul’s hand, and Raoul smiles and murmurs something that Philippe can’t hear beneath the thrumming of his heart, but it doesn’t matter and he draws a breath to ease his racing pulse, Sorelli squeezing his arm a little tighter.

And then Antoine stands before Konstin, and seems to hesitate.

Philippe is a man of the world. His youth was not exactly spotless. He has always lived by two rules: discretion is the better part of valour, and a little selective blindness goes a long way. And he has applied those rules to his sons just as to everything else.

That’s why he sees it when Antoine leans in as if he would hug Konstin, but instead grasps Konstin’s offered hand.

And then Philippe averts his gaze down to meet Sorelli’s, and she nods, and leans into him.

He knows a great deal more than Antoine would have him, but he knows too that some things are best left unsaid.

Then the train whistle blows, a piercing shriek, and Antoine is beside them again, giving Sorelli one last quick hug, and then he wraps his arms around Philippe, catching him off-guard.

His voice is rough as he murmurs, “I promise I’ll be back.” And Philippe only has time to nod and squeeze his arm before he’s gone, pulled away, climbing into the train.

He’ll be back. He _will_ be back. He has to be.

But Philippe closes his eyes, and keeps them closed even as the train whistle shrieks again, and he hears it as it chugs out of the station, the great long stretch of it, pulling so many men and boys away and he would be an old fool to think they could all come back but so long as Antoine does, he will be satisfied.

So long as Antoine does.

When he opens his eyes again, the platform is empty, Sorelli still warm at his side, and he leans into her, feeling suddenly so old, so tired.

“Come on,” she murmurs. “Let’s go home.”

Home is the only place he wants to be now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up next: At the opera, April 1918


	3. Anja, April 1918

They are highly unlikely to get up to anything too sordid in a private box, but when Val requests to accompany Anja to the opera, both of her parents insist that Konstin join them as a chaperone.

Val has no qualms over it, agreeing that it is best not to encourage idle talk over the nature of their relationship. Besides, he has always liked Commandant Daaé who has never been anything but kind to him (and who once joked that they are both of gossiped parentage), but Anja sorely wishes that her parents were not so old-fashioned, and longs to spend an evening with her suitor (lover? they haven’t done anything more than kiss, but does that mean she can call him her lover?) without anyone’s prying eyes, not even her well-meaning brother.

(Konstin, for his part, would dearly love to be at home in bed. His thoughts have been too much of a whirl for him to get much sleep, not helped by Antoine’s recent letter which mentioned his going up the line again, but while he knows that Val De Courcy has no untoward designs on his little sister, he can understand his mother’s anxieties over it.)

Still, chaperone or no, Anja can pay no attention to the happenings on the stage (something boring and ridiculously dull, wholly inferior to anything Konstin or his father might ever have composed), when she has Val sitting beside her, one auburn curl escaping the neat order of his hair to hang over his forehead, the collar of his dress uniform brushing his neck just so, and she aches to kiss him, aches to pull him close and press her lips to that place where fabric brushes skin, feel him pressed to her, inhale his warm scent. She often thinks that he looks more handsome every time she sees him, but tonight—

Tonight he is beautiful.

She sneaks glances at him from the side of her eye, and his gaze catches hers, his cheeks colouring. The slight twitch of his lips is enough to make her heart falter, and her throat is dry as she swallows, her fingers twisting her gloves, longing to reach out to him to take his hand, resting there on his knee, his long fingers tapered and elegant.

She steals a glance at Konstin on her left, to check if he is watching her or the stage, and almost gasps.

He is slumped low in his seat, his head tilted to the side, and even at this angle she can see that his eyes are closed, can see the slow, even rise and fall of his chest as he breathes.

Asleep.

Konstin Daaé, asleep at the opera!

It’s the most scandalous thing Anja has heard in years, and she is just about to reach over and wake him, when she catches herself.

If Konstin is asleep, then she has no chaperone. If he were anyone else, she might suspect it a ruse to catch her off-guard. But Konstin is too honest for such a sneak trick as that. If he looks asleep then he must be asleep.

And feeling a thrill of mischief, Anja looks back to Val, and reaching over, takes his hand.

It is as warm in hers as she remembers, and when he turns to give her a questioning look, she curls her hand around the nape of his neck, and slowly draws his head down.

His lips are soft when they brush hers, and she slips her tongue into his mouth, the hitch of his breath is all the sweetest thing she’s heard all evening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up next: A difficult letter, May 1918


	4. Konstin, April/May 1918

The letters keep coming, even now though it is months since Konstin was wounded, months since he commanded a man, months since he wrote his own letters. Letters from mothers who have lost their sons, from sisters deprived of brothers, from wives bereft of their husbands. Letters from fathers and brothers too, but mostly it is women who are left to write, women who are thanking him for his condolences, for the little things he has to say about the ones they’ve lost, snatches of memories that are only barely his own.

It was his duty to write to them. But he is still surprised that they write back. And that they do not seem to hate him.

It would be easier if they did.

The letter from Madeline Dupuis comes in mid-April. The flowers are in bloom, a blaze of colour outside his window. It is four days since he last had word from Antoine, and he is just beginning to get nervous at his translation work, asking Corporal Bisset to fortify his tea with whiskey and his words cutting just a little sharper, when an aide brings him the letter.

His first reaction is the sinking disappointment that it is not from Antoine.

His second is clawing nausea at the sight of the name.

His fingers ache for a cigarette, and he clenches them tight, unable to stomach the thought of the smoke, unable to stomach the thought that a letter from Dupuis’ mother and no word from Antoine can only be an omen.

He closes his eyes, breathes slowly through his nose, and tries to get a handle on himself.  _There’s no such thing as omens...no such thing as omens...of course there_   _hasn’t been word for four days, he’s busy..._

Slowly the feeling that everything is out of his control subsides, ebbing away with the worst of the nausea. He promises himself, a thousand times he promises himself, that Antoine is well, that Antoine is merely busy, and his eyes flicker open to find Bisset looking at him with concern.

He shakes his head ever so slightly, and with all the control he can muster he lifts the letter and tucks it away in a drawer, out of his sight.

“Pass me the top English document...”

But out of sight is not out of mind, and try as he may all day the memory of that letter comes back to him. Dupuis’ mother. A woman who’s lost two sons and a son-in-law to this war, and he tries not to entertain hypotheticals, tries not to imagine how things might be if Dupuis had lived because that way lies twisting guilt and makes it so hard to breathe, but Dupuis’ mother, in another life, might have become Marguerite’s mother-in-law, if things had gone well. And to have a letter from her now—

Konstin calls it an early evening, releases Bisset from his duties when he gets home, and sits in the study with Raoul, trying not to think.

* * *

 

It is two weeks before he can open the letter, two weeks and April has faded into May, and sleep is elusive, drowned out by fresh nightmares that leave him tired and heavy and his mind sluggish looking at words, trying to turn them around. There has been confirmation, several times, that Antoine continues to draw breath, that Guillaume is safe in port, that Marguerite is well in the new hospital they fell back to after the German advance. Confirmation from everyone, that they are all well, or as well as they can be, but still he wakes trembling for the third time in a night, his mind playing tricks on him, showing him his own hands pulling a blood-soaked body out from a shell crater, a body that he only knows is Antoine’s because of the notebook inside his coat, the blood soaked through the pages, blurring the words, his face mangled.

He hobbles to the window, throws it open, feels the chill of the morning air on his face.

It is only when he has caught his breath, has washed his hands and proved that there is no blood on them, has lit a candle and found himself definitively in his own room, sought out the letter that arrived from Antoine yesterday, that he swallows, and knows that if he does not read the words of Madeline Dupuis, he will never be able to sleep again.

Sometime in the last two weeks, he can’t remember exactly when, he brought the letter home. Stuffed it in his coat and tried to forget about it. Throwing a robe around himself, he seeks out his coat hanging on the back of his door, and searches the pockets for the letter. It falls before he can grasp it, and it hits the floor softly. The pain that throbs in his leg as he stoops to pick it up makes him clench his teeth, but he gets it, and trembles as he straightens, leaning against the wall and kneading his leg to will the pain away.

He could turn on the light, could light the old lamp if he wanted, but it wouldn’t feel appropriate to read such a letter in such brightness, so he returns to bed and settles on the edge, his leg stretched out before him, and tilts the envelope to the candle.

There is his name, his full proper name, as if he might try to tell himself that it’s all a mistake, and it’s almost too much to bear, too much to take in.

He draws a shuddering breath, and opens the letter.

Words leap out at him, phrases.

_Please_   _forgive me for taking so long to answer_   _your kind_   _letter. I have sat_   _down to write many times and never been able to find the words..._

_It is a comfort, to know that Edouard was so highly thought of..._

_He mentioned_   _you often in his letters_   _and admired you greatly..._

_I would deeply appreciate it if you would thank_   _the cousin you mentioned_   _who was so kind_   _to_   _him in_   _his last days..._

There is more, lines and lines more, but Konstin cannot read it, the pain drilling deep in his heart, his eyes filled with tears, and he slumps over, head falling on his pillow, too tired, too hollow, to fight the tears that come.

* * *

 

That is where Christine finds him, when dawn has broken, lying half on his bed, half off it, deeply asleep, the letter still caught between his fingers. The candle has guttered low, and she blows it out, eases the letter from his hand and sets it aside. Carefully, so as not to wake him, she lifts his legs and sets them down on the bed, draws the blanket over him. In the watery light of morning he is so pale, so frail, his face so young, and her throat is tight, her heart aching, as she kisses his forehead, and smooths back his hair, and slips from the room.

Let him sleep a while longer. His work can wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up next: Memories and anxieties, August 1918


	5. Philippe & Sorelli, August 1918

It is more than forty-seven years since he wore a uniform. Forty-eight since he rode off to war, feeling it his duty. He is Comte Philippe De Chagny, of course it was his duty to defend his country against the invader. His blood sprung from this land. He was always bound to defend it.

That’s what he told himself then, when he hugged Raoul and tried not to think that his little brother might inherit his title before he was even ten years old.

And it is what he tells himself now, has told himself every day of the last four years. His blood has sprung from this land. His sons are bound to defend it.

However he has tried to justify it to himself, it is no comfort in the dark of night, when the cold in his bones keeps him from sleep even with Sorelli warm beside him, when all he can remember is the telegram that told him Antoine had been wounded, when the knowledge throbs that being wounded once has not made him immune to bullets and shellfire, cannot protect him or Guillaume. There is nothing, nothing in the whole wide world, that can confer protection on them while they are still in the front line.

His old uniform still hangs in the wardrobe.

He would pull it on and ride off to the Front again if he thought it would do any good, if he thought it would protect his sons.

Sometimes he dreams of it. Dreams of that uniform, of mounting up and riding off and finding Antoine and pulling him out of whatever trench he is in to send him back here to safety. Dreams of finding Guillaume when he is in port and sending him home too, taking his place aboard the ship. He wakes sweating from those dreams, his heart aching, tears in his eyes at the futility of it all.

They fought the Germans before but of course the bastards came back. And there is nothing he can do about it, no way he can protect his family, nothing for him only to sit here nice and safe in Paris while both of his sons are getting shot at and bombed.

It is a terrible thing to think, but the only peace he’s known in these last four years were the brief weeks when Antoine was wounded but healing and Guillaume was still on leave. When they were both within touching distance of him and safe from everything, safe from the world.

If he could just have them safe, here, for one night, he would be able to breathe, be able to sleep.

But it does not do to dwell on impossible dreams, and he sighs, and presses himself closer to Sorelli, and prays that this war ends while he is still alive to see his sons again.

* * *

 

She has not danced professionally in thirty-six years. Thirty-six years, four months, nine days and a scattering of hours that she does not care to count (three, three hours). She still remembers the way her heart pounded as she took her final bow, no one else in the world suspecting a thing (except Christine), not truly certain of it herself.

She took her final bow, and walked off the stage when the curtains fell, head held high. And in that moment Marguerite Sorelli, prima ballerina, unofficially ceased to be.

She knew she was expecting. She had known that for some time by then (three weeks, the whole of three weeks, when for the fourth day in a row she could not keep down her breakfast), and had remained silent about it, confiding only in Christine and then only when Konstin was already a week old and the sweetest little thing she had ever seen.

It was not usual for her to go home with Philippe. They had done it several times, but it was more usual for him to visit her in her own apartment. But that night she insisted, and even now, all these years later, she remembers the way he frowned, ever so slightly, before he nodded.

He was so handsome then, every line of him aristocratic, regal, as if he had been hand-carved, the very faintest whispers of silver creeping into his golden hair.

(There is still something shockingly handsome about him now, the vestiges of that old beauty.)

And when he gaped at her, after she got the words out, she thought it was all lost, was ready to turn on her heel and fight the tears, until he sunk down onto one knee.

It was her turn to gape, and his hand was gentle, lightly callused, taking hers.

“If you have no objection,” he whispered, “I would dearly love for you to become my wife.”

Ten words. Ten words, and all she had ever known was transformed.

Of course, back then they all thought she was only carrying one baby. Even as her waist thickened and her dresses ceased to fit and she could not sleep for the twisting movements inside, the kicking under her ribs, they all thought it was just one baby, eager to meet the world, and Philippe joked about their little dancer as he kissed the swell of her belly.

They never expected that it might be two. Never expected that it might be two boys, no less.

Never expected that those boys might grow up to go off to war someday.

Her breath catches, and she sits up in bed. Philippe sleeps on, his creased face still so dear, his eyelids fluttering in his dreams, and she knows she will not sleep tonight, no matter how peaceful her husband is (for once). Her children are all so far away, two sons fighting and her precious girl trying to help. How can she sleep? She has had no letter in three days, and true there has been no telegram either, but that does not mean there will not be, does not mean they are _safe._

No. There is only one solution for it tonight, for the restlessness, for the nauseating worry and the tormenting thoughts.

She takes a breath to stead herself, and smooths back Philippe’s hair, and slips out of bed. The silk of her gown is soft gliding over her skin, and she ties the belt around her waist. Her dancing shoes are in his study with the phonograph, where he knows she will find them when she wants them.

It might be thirty-six years since she left the stage, but these last four have sharpened her skills.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up next - Farmhouse reflections, August 1918


	6. Antoine, August 1918

The shelling is distant. Not so distant that there is not some part of him concerned about it, but distant enough that it is not of immediate concern tonight. Distant enough that he should be able to sleep.

Distant enough that he _would_ be able to sleep, if his heart were not aching for Konstin.

It has been worse lately, every new day away from him magnifying the longing, and no end in sight. Sometimes he closes his eyes and it is as if Konstin might be about to come through the door, a smile twitching at his lips even as he is every inch a commanding officer, tall and broad and proud, his uniform neatly arranged, greatcoat draped around his shoulders.

As if the force of his imagining might conjure him here, pluck him from the depths of his dreams, and if Konstin appeared right now, if Konstin appeared right now—

If Konstin appeared right now, Antoine would hate to do it but he would send him away. This is not the place for him. He is not anywhere near fit enough for this. It is too dangerous for him. Was too dangerous before but especially now. It might be the whole of eleven months since he was wounded, but those wounds are not the sort that ever wholly heal and if he appeared now, hobbling and leaning on his cane for balance, he would only get wounded again, might even get killed!

No. No matter how much he aches for Konstin, it is better, a thousand times better, that he is far away from here.

Antoine’s eyes fall closed again, block out the small room in the old farmhouse where he is spending the night. There is no man in the house, no aged farmer who’s sent his sons to the war, only an old woman and a girl who is maybe Anja’s age, and has the roughened hands of someone who does the work herself and possibly always has. He did not want to take her bed, would have gratefully slept on the floor or made up a bed on the table, but she insisted and in the face of the fire in her eyes it would have been rude of him to refuse. She threw open the barn to his men before he could ask, promised that her cows would not hurt a soul, and when he thanked her for her kindness, she looked him dead in the eye and told him to drive the Germans out.

“I don’t want them getting this far.”

Guillaume would consider her beautiful, and at the thought of his brother there is another pang of loneliness, of worry. Guillaume’s last letter spoke of a bout of pneumonia, not severe enough for him to spend more than a few days in hospital, or to warrant his being invalided home, and he added that he had not included it in his letter to their mother, only said that he is on shore duties for the foreseeable future.

But any pneumonia is not good, not now, with what they’re saying about influenza, and what Antoine has tried not to hear.

What he would not give, for Guillaume to be safe in Paris with Konstin.

What he would not give to be there with them.

He is not much of a musician, but he can read notation well enough, and the last page of Konstin’s last letter was all notation, was an extract of a piece that he composed just for the two of them, the spring before the war came. And it plays softly in Antoine’s mind now, in this bed in this farmhouse so very far from his side, and thinking of his brother, and longing for his lover, Antoine can see against his closed eyelids, Konstin as he was then, so handsome, in his burgundy gown with the sash hanging open, only a long shirt underneath, playing his violin by the fire.

That sweet memory fills Antoine with peace, and carries him into his dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up next: An anniversary, September 1918


	7. Marguerite, 23 September 1918

It is a year, the whole of one year. Three hundred and sixty-five days turned around. Three hundred and sixty-five nights since she held him in her arms, and felt it as he took his last breath.

How can it be a year? It feels like it was only yesterday that she sat beside him, kissing his face and holding his hand as he tried to whisper her name and she tried to shush him so he would not waste what strength he had left (“Mar…Mar…”). But was it her name he was trying to speak? Or did he see his dead brother behind his eyes? Marcel, who Konstin told her was shot in the first year of the war laying telephone wires and who died in the ambulance after, surely scared if he was conscious at all. Did he come to Edouard at the end? Would it be a comfort to know that he did?

(She doesn’t know. She can never know.)

How can it be _only_ a year? Sometimes it feels like forever has passed, feels like every day has been a year, and her memories of him are fleeting as if he was not quite real, as if none of it was quite real, not him, not her, not the feelings in her heart. As if she might have dreamt him, as if her feelings were conjured by some dark magic to torment her.

She cannot even visit his grave. When the Germans advanced in the spring they had to move on, had to leave the château that had almost become an odd sort of home, where all of her memories of Edouard were, where some part of him and all the others that died beneath her hands must surely linger. Amélie gripped her arm as they sat in the back of the wagon and she could not see the château through her tears.

But Amélie is like her now, too. Could not be there for her fiancé, René, when influenza became pneumonia and pneumonia stopped his heart. And Marguerite held her all night after the telegram came, as she cried, and as she whimpered and as she stared blankly at nothing. The new curé, Barré, is a long way from Dumas, but when he heard what happened he sat and prayed with them until dawn broke and Amélie was so worn out she could not stay awake.

It is a little shrine in the corner of their tent, with the candles they’ve bought and Rosary beads, her Saint Anthony, and a photograph of René, and one of Edouard that Konstin found somewhere and sent to her. They are each so far from the graves that cradle those they love, but in their tent they can feel just a little closer.

She had a telegram from Konstin this morning, and she knows he is aching too, is missing Edouard and terrified for Antoine, but his telegram held none of that, pushed it all aside simply to say, I KNOW TODAY IS HARD BUT YOU CAN GET THROUGH IT, and when she read it a lump lodged in her throat to think of him thinking of her, of him knowing what today means.

But for all that she wishes she could curl up in bed and simply _be_ , just remember Edouard and all that he was and all that she’s learned about him, the ambulances keep rolling in and she tucks away the letter that Konstin forwarded from Edouard’s mother, and kisses his picture and fixes herself.

Later she can think of him. Later she can remember him. But for now there are broken boys who need her hands, and Edouard would want her to take care of them, would want only that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up next - A birthday, September 1918


	8. Konstin & Antoine, 26 September 1918

He spends three days working on it in occasional spare moments. Three days over scraps of paper, drafting and re-drafting, getting it just right so that if anyone _does_ happen to read it and wonder, then it does not sound like anything untoward, anything that might give them away.

Antoine was supposed to have a week of home leave, coinciding with his birthday. He put in for it weeks ago and his request was granted, and the plan was that the two families would have dinner together, at a restaurant where Philippe is well known, and then Antoine and Konstin alone would go to the opera and, possibly, retire beneath the opera for the night, to mark the occasion in their own way, and they would drink wine and Konstin would play and they would spend the night in each other’s arms, pretending, for one night, that there is no war. It would be far and away a better celebration than last year, when they spent it in neighbouring hospital beds.

So much for the plan. A week ago the promised leave was rescinded, Antoine told in no uncertain terms that he was needed behind the line, to prepare more men for the advance.

And so a telegram is all that they have. One telegram, inadequate to contain all that they would have said in person, all that they would have felt. Woefully, wholly inadequate, when the alternative was to have each other.

The letter bearing the terrible news arrived when Konstin was in his office at divisional HQ, and his throat closed up when he read the apology in Antoine’s strong hand, and the relief that at least he is behind the line was overshadowed by the loss of their promised time. He ordered Bisset out for fresh coffee so he could have peace to compose himself, and itched for a cigarette even though the thought of smoking makes him nauseous, and once he blinked away the tears and had a steadying mouthful of the brandy in his desk, he set to work on re-gaining himself.

Set to work on composing the telegram.

It is a code they have used for years, one that they developed in Saint-Cyr and have had ample time to perfect since. A seemingly ordinary paragraph of writing, but every three words form a sentence spelling out a message, and he knows Antoine will recognise it.

Normally he gives his telegrams to Bisset to send, but this one he takes down and sends himself. Mamma and Raoul have already wired Antoine and Guillaume both, and Philippe and Sorelli will have done so too. He has already sent one to Guillaume, but the one for Antoine—

The one for Antoine is infinitely precious, and after he sends it, and wishes his words well on their journey, he retires home, to the privacy of his room and his violin, and hopes that somehow, out there, Antoine will know he is playing for him.

* * *

 

He knows he disappointed Konstin with his letter, and he hates it. Hates that he disappointed him, hates that he was made to, hates this war and hates everything that’s keeping him away from Paris. He should be there now, holding Konstin, kissing him, dreaming that the whole world has ceased to exist and it is only them left, the last survivors, that there might be some way for them to stay in that moment forever.

But he is stuck here, in this tiny office, out of danger but not far enough away that he cannot hear the shells, and Konstin is back there, and there’s nothing either of them can do about it, nothing except hate it and ache.

A knock on the door and it cracks open. He catches a glimpse of a face, pale and anxious, and sighs, regretting that he sent the boy away so forcefully earlier. None of this is Remarque’s fault.

“Telegram for you, sir.”

Another telegram. He’s had a dozen of them already today, most of them war-related but some from his family, and telegrams are cold comfort when he could be back there with them instead of here. He takes the telegram and nods. “Thank you, Corporal.” Tomorrow he will apologise for his earlier behaviour, but Remarque gives him a slight smile before he leaves, and Antoine feels marginally absolved.

He opens the telegram, beginning to wonder who it could be from. Probably more damn orders, but his heart skips a bit when he reads the name, clear as day.

_Commandant E.K. Daaé._

Konstin.

The words blur before him, and he wipes away his tears to try to fathom them.

ALL IS HAPPY HERE STOP ALIX BIRTHDAY STOP VAL AND I SENT OUR LOVE STOP ALL MISS YOU FINAL STOP

It takes longer than he will ever admit to for him to realise that it is in their code. It is the mention of Alix that gives it away, because they do not know any Alix, only a character in an opera that Konstin never finished composing. Including something so incongruous can only mean that it’s a code, and with his breath in his throat, Antoine counts out every third word, ignoring the stops.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY I LOVE YOU

It is not enough, not half enough, not compared to what they were supposed to have, but the very sight of those words makes him tremble, and he traces his fingers over Konstin’s name as he sets the telegram down.

“I love you too,” he whispers, voice hoarse as tears prickle his eyes. “I love you too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up next: A late night, October 1918


	9. Christine, October 1918

It is six months since the brief time Konstin spent in the convalescent hospital. Six months, and sometimes it is as if he was never away at the Front, has always been here safe in his room. And sometimes she wakes from an almost-sleep, Raoul’s arms around her and her heart pounding, needing to see Konstin, needing to touch him, needing to know that he is here, that there is no one shooting at him, no one dropping shells on him, no gas creeping towards him. That he is safe and well and will stay that way.

Tonight is one of those nights, and Christine slips from bed, careful not to disturb Raoul, asleep with his face half-buried in the pillow. He grumbles something unintelligible, and sighs, fingers twitching, and she brushes her lips lightly over his forehead before she ties the sash of her gown and tiptoes out.

The wood is cool beneath her feet, and for a moment it jolts her, her heart catching, reminds her of creeping out of bed so long ago to find Erik at his organ playing softly, his fingers seeming to barely strike the keys, as if he were afraid of waking her even though sometimes she could not sleep without him beside her.

The memory dissipates almost as soon as it came, the old ache in her chest throbbing, and she swallows, wrapping her gown tighter around herself. She used to be afraid that she would lose Erik, piece by piece, that their brief marriage, that he, would fade from her memory. But the more time passes, the further and further away it gets, the more it feels like it comes back to her, piece by piece, collections of little moments rebuilding in her mind. Thirty-seven years since she lost him, since she learned about the tiny life living beneath her heart.

(She still remembers that day so clearly, when Erik drew his last breath in her arms. But she will not let herself think about it tonight.)

So help her but she will not lose Konstin.

And she has not lost him, not yet, no matter what the war tried to do.

She peeks in on Anja, the first bedroom she comes to, to assure herself that she is safely home from her shift at the hospital, and finds her sprawled on the bed, the quilts half-slipped off her. Christine steals in, re-covers her so she will not get cold, and Anja snuffles slightly, murmurs something that might almost be _Val_. In spite of the aching inside, Christine huffs a laugh. Bless her but her little girl is so in love.

In the next room, Émile is curled in a ball beneath his quilts, a candle flickering low on the locker beside him. If it were not for the blond hair poking out from beneath the covers it would look as if there were just a lump in the bed, and quietly as she can Christine goes over and blows out the candle. The smoke curls dark grey in the air, soft sharpness of molten wax, and gently as she can she pulls the quilt down to Émile’s neck, so his face doesn’t get too warm, and he never stirs, stays tightly curled as if he were still a little boy, even as she creeps back out of the room and eases the door closed behind her.

And then it is Konstin, Konstin, the reason she got out of bed. How many times has she checked in on him since he came back? How many times did she come in here while he was away, just to feel close to him? As if by being close to him she could bring him home sooner? If it worked it worked in a backwards way, wounding him so badly, but he is here, tonight. He is here and he is safe and tears prickle her eyes but she wills them away, looking down on him sleeping quietly (a rare enough thing, but he will not admit that). His arm is flung up over his face, as if his eyes were sore as he fell asleep, as if he were blotting out the light even though he left no light on. His arm will ache in the morning if he stays like that all night, and gently she takes it and eases it down to lie beside him, revealing his closed eyes, the scar on his forehead. She bows her head, and a rogue tear drips to land in his hair as she kisses him gently, that scar on his forehead and the one on his cheek, a thin ridge beneath her lips (if he were a boy she would promise him that her kiss would take the pain away, but he is too old for such comforting lies, and the scars on his face, at least, do not pain him).

She straightens herself and brushes the tears from her eyes. It is foolish to cry when he’s safe, when she has him where she can protect him, and she might almost laugh at herself, maybe, but when she turns to the door she finds Raoul there, smiling softly. His feet are quiet as he crosses the room and comes to stand beside her, and he, too, bows his head and kisses Konstin lightly on the forehead.

His arms are warm as they come around her waist, and she leans into him, grateful to have him at her side, always, and grateful that all of their precious children are safe, if only for tonight.


	10. Konstin, February 1919

It is the first time he has been down to visit his father since the war ended, the first time since many months before that. He could not bear to come down alone, not when there was so much still uncertain, not when he—he didn’t _know_.

(He had half an idea, once, that if Antoine didn’t—if he got word that Antoine was—if _something terrible happened_ , that he might throw himself into the lake, that it was an option for him. But then he thought of his mother, and all that his father put her through, and he thought of Antoine, telling him to at least _try_ , and knew he couldn’t do it, not really, no matter how tempting it might be.)

But his baby sister is getting married in the morning (how is Anja old enough to get married? He could have sworn that yesterday she was running around and climbing trees and insisting on being rescued like a princess in a story), and he can’t explain it but it just felt right to come down here. He tested her first dance several times, played it and played it and checked every line for flaws, every note, recorded it on the phonograph so he could play it back to himself and listen to it with a clear head. It’s perfect. It could not possibly be more perfect.

And after all that, he just couldn’t settle.

He didn’t tell Antoine where he was going, just kissed him goodbye and promised to be home soon, and if Antoine worried about him going off on his own, he didn’t say anything, just kissed him back and promised to have cocoa ready.

He’s probably just happy to see him doing something other than obsessing over music.

(Or waking after nightmares.)

“It’s me.”

He never quite knows what to say when he’s down here. Anything he might say feels trite, feels awkward on his tongue. He can’t call him Father because it feels too stiff, but he can’t call him Erik because it feels too removed, and he can’t call him Papa, not now, not when he used to when he was small and it still feels like something he could only say when he was small, before he knew so much, before everything became tainted with knowledge.

He likes to think his own feelings have not been tainted by all he knows of his father, but they have. And they make the words catch in his throat, longing and anger and revulsion and grief and desperation and love all mingled together, and sometimes he thinks some part of him hates the man, hates what he did to his mother, hates him for what he inflicted on himself, hates him for dying, and then he hates himself for that tiny part that hates his father, and the cycle starts again when all he really wants, all he’s ever wanted, from the time he first learned to talk, is to know _him_ , to have _him_. The one person, the one man, who’s always been beyond his reach.

He can go to the graveyard and talk to Nadir, talk to Darius. They buried them side-by-side, because even in death it seemed unnatural for them to be apart. Talk to them and tell them how he’s doing and what he’s doing and even about the war, and about the way every part of him aches sometimes with remembered pain, how the nightmares never go away, not fully, they’re always lingering int he back of his mind, and know that no matter what he might say they would understand, or make him feel as if they understood. But his own _father_ —

He never knew him. He never knew him and that has always been so much the problem, hasn’t it? His father never even knew of his future existence, died believing that there could never be a child if he even thought of it in his last days. Who is he to think his father would even _like_ him?

Mamma says he would, and Raoul. And Nadir always said it too. But he knows as well as anyone that his father was a difficult man, to put it lightly.

All he has are other people’s stories, other people’s memories, nothing of his own, only a watch, only music scores and handwritten notes and books and a house that nobody lives in and a violin and an organ that he doesn’t know how to fix. He has all of these _things_ , old masks and clothes and furniture and an old silver hypodermic with a needle that glints in the firelight, and he never told his mother he found it even though he’s had it for more than twenty years because it would only upset her, and that old hypodermic is the thing that feels most like his father’s, that feels the most as if he once touched it, and held it, and _used_ it.

He can understand self-medication. It is another thing they have in common, like music and the colour of their eyes.

All of these things, and the memories from when he was ill, when he was wounded and dying even though he survived because he would have died and he has no doubt over that, he was just lucky, that’s the only reason he’s still breathing. Luck and medicine and a skilled surgeon, but he would have died and maybe he should have, maybe it would have been fairer if he had, and so he has the memories, of drifting in and out, of his father’s ghost sitting at his bedside, holding his hand and talking to him, and he has no idea if those memories are real or not. They might have been hallucinations or dreams and all authorities on the subject would say they were brought on by the delirium and infection, but he wants them to have been real, he _needs_ them to have been real so badly it feels as if he is still bleeding somewhere deep inside and no one can ever find it and fix it.

But if dreams are all they were? What if you die and there’s nothing?

He’s tried not to think about it, tried not to think about it so badly that sometimes it feels as if it’s all he can think about, the only thought that will stay in his mind. What if he’ll die and it’s just blankness and he’ll never meet his father, his dad, his _papa_ , the man who made him, the reason he ever drew breath at all. What if his only chance was before he was born?

He’s never talked about it, never been able to, not really. Nadir was the only one who ever knew, and he’s gone too, has been gone for so _long_ that sometimes it feels he was never real, so long that the memories are all faded, that he can’t remember the cadence of his voice, the way his eyes sparkled, how gentle his hands were.

God he misses him. He misses him every damn day.

His leg is cramping. He would lower himself to the ground, like he used to when he was small and would chatter for hours telling his papa about everything he’d seen and any music he’d heard and how he loved playing the violin and anything else that came into his mind. He doesn’t remember first coming down here, he was only a very small boy at the time, but his mother has told him that he was afraid of the dark and the tunnels, and when they finally reached here, the place where his father is buried, he got excited when she told him that he could talk to his papa and his papa would hear. Then he started bringing little shells and little stones and old buttons off his clothes and pretty feathers he’d found, something special every time he came down as presents to his papa.

When he was fifteen, and Mamma and Raoul were on their honeymoon, he came down here one day (it was a Sunday, a beautiful sunny Sunday) and gathered up the old things he’d left when he was small, as many of them as he could find that time had not dispersed, and buried them in a small hole beside the grave, with scraps of letters that he’d written to a dead man.

Then he left, and dressed in his best clothes with the imperious mask he learned off Philippe, he visited Jules Bernard at the address he’d found for the man, and asked him to tell him everything he knew about his father.

To this day, he is certain that Bernard thought he was looking at a phantasm, never mind that he does not share his father’s deformity.

He kneads his thigh, wills the muscle to forgive him. He needs to be able to stand during the ceremony tomorrow, after all, and he would lower himself to the ground now but he is slightly afraid that he would not be able to get back to his feet, so he leans heavier on his cane and feels some of the aching ease from his joints.

“I’m sorry I can’t think of what to say.” His voice is rough to his own ears. “I’ve been busy composing for Anja. She’s getting married tomorrow, to Valentin De Courcy. You wouldn’t know him. You wouldn’t even have known his father, but he likes music, Val, even though he can’t play a note. He’s an excellent accountant though. He’s not allowed any active duty because of the damage to his chest, but they’ve kept him on for paperwork.” He swallows. “I couldn’t bear another minute of that paperwork.” All those body counts, the consolidation of graveyards, the cleaning of the battlefields… so much administration of death. His stomach couldn’t stand it. “I’ve resigned.” So has Antoine, though they haven’t quite figured out what they’re going to do yet.

He scrubs a hand through his hair, winds his fingers in through the buttons of his coat and feels the chain of his watch, the gold warm from being so close to him. It’s the first time he’s been able to bear wearing his father’s watch since everything happened. Maybe that’s why he felt compelled to come here.

“I composed a piece for you.” His voice is soft, softer than a moment before, so soft it’s barely a whisper. “I’ve composed for you before but this one—this one feels different. I think it’s good.” Unspoken is the, _I hope you would too_.

It’s sitting in his study, the composition, deep in the bottom drawer, under the battered cigarette case that he has no use for anymore, and his watch that he had in the trenches and all the letters that he saved from Antoine. He had to put it as far away from himself as possible, because it felt too real, too much, too full of everything he’s always been unable to say and even composing it was an accident, he never expected the notes to start flowing the way they did, it was as if his hands were possessed.

But maybe that is why it forced itself into existence.

“I’ll play it for you the next time I come.”

And it will save him from having to speak, from having to think of something to say.

He should be going. Antoine will worry.

But first he stoops down, as low as he dares, good leg bent beneath him and bad leg throbbing, and brushes his fingers over the earth that hides all that remains of his father, in his wedding suit and a shroud of linen and the coffin that he used to sleep in, and there is no mask down there, nothing to hide his face. This is as close to him as he has ever been able to get. “I love you, Papa,” he whispers, voice catching in his throat. “And I miss you so much.”

Then he swallows and straightens back up, and with one last nod to the grave beneath his feet, he turns and haltingly walks away.

If there are tears on his cheeks, there is no one to ever see.


	11. Antoine, February 1919

The new scars on Konstin’s sides are the single most terrifying things that Antoine has ever seen. They cast even his older scars from the shell that almost killed him and the surgeries that followed (and there are so many of them, too many of them, and sometimes they still make his stomach churn if he sees them and his guard is down), those terrible existing scars, into the pale.  
At least if he had died then (and it is such a small consolation, only the tiniest scrap of consolation) then Antoine would have been there beside him, holding his hand.  
But the scars on his sides, one thin slitted line each side, are so much worse. Antoine knows, logically he knows, that if it were not for the wounds that became those scars, then Konstin would have died. Those gaps were necessary to pass the tubes into his lungs that drained the fluid so he could breathe, so he would not suffocate. But if he had died then, if the pneumonia had taken him away, then Antoine would not have been there. He was still at the Front.  
It is three months since the war ended. The whole of three months and sometimes it feels as distant as if it were years ago, and sometimes it feels as if it were only yesterday, and sometimes it feels as if it is still raging somewhere, as if any minute a letter might come ordering him back to his regiment, or ordering Konstin away from him.  
Sometimes it is still so very hard to breathe thinking of it.  
He swallows, and looks back to the scars.  
Konstin has not been sleeping well lately, has not been sleeping much at all, really. He is still plagued by the nightmares that came after the shell (that Antoine knows, too, were there before, though not so bad as after), and sometimes they disappear for weeks and weeks, and sometimes they attack with renewed vengeance. This is one of those latter times and Antoine hates it, hates it so very much. If he could he would take the nightmares himself, take them away so Konstin never has to deal with them again, never has to wake sweating and gasping for breath or screaming, but it is beyond his power to do something to bring him ease and he hates it. He hates it.  
He is only relieved that last night was peaceful. That sheer exhaustion carried Konstin off to sleep and kept him that way, and now as the dawn light filters in grey through the window, he is still sleeping, the lines of tiredness smoothed from his face, his lips just slightly parted.  
It could be any morning before the war. If it were not for the scars.  
Tears tighten in Antoine’s throat, and he presses himself closer to Konstin.  
God, he could have lost him. He could have lost him so easily, and he would not have known about it for days.  
But he didn’t lose him, he didn’t. And that—that’s the miracle about it. That’s what takes his breath away, and he brushes his lips against Konstin’s forehead. Konstin snuffles and sighs and nuzzles into him, and Antoine holds him a little closer.  
His fingers brush the scar on his left side.  
It was afterwards he learned that Konstin had been ill at all. Everything was in such disarray in those last days of the war. They were advancing and attacking and he had no less than two close escapes. There was no way that word could have reached him, though he learned too, afterwards, that Anja had sent him a telegram.  
He remembers the moment the guns stopped firing, when silence spread across the land. His ears buzzed in the sudden quiet, his jaw aching from being clenched so tight, and distantly he heard the first tiny birdsong he had noticed in months, and it seemed so out of place, there in the mud and the blood and the death, to hear something so beautiful, and he thought, everything oddly disjointed, that Konstin would compose for weeks after it, if he were there.  
And he didn’t know that all the way back in Paris, Konstin was lying at death’s door.  
Perhaps it is better that he didn’t know. It would have distracted him if he had known about Konstin’s illness. If he had known how bad it was—how close, then he might have panicked, might have done something ridiculous.  
But if he had known, then it wouldn’t have hit him all at once the way it did, that Konstin was ill with the flu, that the flu had become pneumonia and they were doing all they could, that Konstin was dying, and then, just when he had begun to despair, that Konstin’s fever had broken, and he was improving, and would live.  
(He broke down in tears to read the words, and sank to his knees, the telegrams still clutched in his hands, and leaned into one of the aides for support, which one he doesn’t remember, and doesn’t care.)  
Weeks later, when he was finally back in Paris, he rushed from his parents’ house to Konstin’s side, and Christine hugged him to see him, and Raoul squeezed his hand tight, and then they led him into the parlour, where Konstin was propped on the chaise, a book balanced on his lap, and looking so pale, and so tired. But he smiled at him and that smile lit up the world.  
And when they were alone, he kissed Konstin’s hand, and his cheek, and his lips, and Konstin kissed him back, and traced his cheek and murmured, voice thick with tears, “I didn’t think I’d see you again.”  
It was all Antoine could do, not to give in and weep then, and he pulled Konstin as close as he dared (and he was so fragile, so gaunt, after losing what weight he’d gained back after being wounded), and held him and kissed him and whispered, “The fact that you’re alive is a miracle.”  
All these months later, it feels like no less of a miracle.  
He swallows, and kisses Konstin’s hair again, and tears trickle down into the dark curls, but he cannot help them.  
Let him sleep a little longer, until the tears have stopped, and dried. There is no rush.

 


	12. Konstin, September 1924

He hasn’t smoked a cigarette since late September 1917. The exact date he has no idea. Everything about those days is a haze, long periods of time filled only with the memory of pain, of voices, of movement, long blank spaces until a hazy room came into view, and there was Antoine looking back at him. His hand remembers flicking away the cigarette butt, something so familiar he didn’t have to think about it. He remembers the mud of the trench wall, remembers Dupuis’ eye catching his, and his own slight nod.  
And then nothing. The fog. The squeal of a shell. A gush of blood faded in the air. Tiny things that leave the world spinning if he tries to piece them together, tries to grasp at what happened in between.  
Guillaume brought him a box of cigarettes in the hospital, gaze him a drag of his own when he confessed he didn’t feel up to smoking a whole one, and the smoke caught in his throat, made him gag and choke, the pain searing his chest, and he remembered the way Dupuis would hand him a match in the morning, something he didn’t need to ask for because it was just habit, just how things were.  
He let Guillaume think the tears that ran down his face were from the coughing.  
But he hasn’t touched a cigarette in seven years.  
He hasn’t told Antoine why, not in so many words. But when Antoine asked him — still in the hospital — if he wanted a smoke, he shook his head and whispered that he hadn’t the stomach for it. And he hasn’t seen Antoine light one since he came home at the end of the war, hasn’t tasted it off his lips, hasn’t even felt the familiar shape of his cigarette case in his pocket.  
Konstin’s own cigarette case lives in his desk drawer, under a pile of letters, right beside his medals, where he need not see them, need not know they are there. And sometimes he reaches for it still, a habit remembered in his fingers, and catches himself at the last moment.  
He always had a sharp memory. Too sharp, Antoine told him. Like his father, his mother said. And for so long he was proud of it, of the way he could recall things in crisp clarity with a minimum of effort. Opera scores and lines of poetry and languages and little ordinary things. Drills, routine, singular events. Everything cross-referenced, known by what was happening around it.  
And then the war. The war. And the whole war was a singular event, exhausting in its routine, exhausting when it was anything but routine. Trench raids and burial parties and wire fixing fatigues. Whole weeks when the weight of it all was pressing in on his chest and it was as if there was no room to breathe but somehow he still managed to draw breath, still managed to wake each morning and sleep however broken each night.  
Sometimes he thinks he’s escaped it. Sometimes he thinks it’s finally all fallen behind him. And then he wakes in the night, his heart pounding so hard he’s sure it will break through his chest, the blood rushing in his ears like distant artillery, sweat pumping through his skin, the walls pressing in around him.  
And then Antoine is flicking on the light, is rubbing his back and pulling at the collar of his nightshirt and pressing a cold cloth his head, a glass of brandy to his lips, whispering in his ear, drowning out the half-remembered screeches of shells, the ragged breaths of dying men.  
He would give anything to be able to smoke. Anything to take a drag and feel it filter through his lungs and be able to breathe. But the very thought makes him gag and bile burns in his throat.  
No wonder they locked him away, when they found the cuts bleeding on his arm. No wonder they didn’t listen when he told them his razor had slipped. No wonder tears slipped from Antoine’s eyes when he looked at him. No wonder Antoine still looks at him sometimes as if he might crack, as if one slip and he’ll break, fall to a million pieces.  
They passed him cured. They let him out.  
But he still can’t smoke.

 


	13. Konstin, Antoine, Marguerite, May 1926

It is Marguerite’s idea, one cold night in March. They are sipping wine by the fire, and it is three months until she is to marry André Martin. Konstin is dozing in his chair, worn out after a week spent putting the finishing touches to his latest opera, and Antoine is just thinking he should wake him and send him to bed when she says it.  
“I want to go back.” Her voice is low, and she does not meet his eye when his head snaps up.  
He does not need to ask where she wants to go back to. There is only one place.  
“I won’t feel right marrying André until I’ve been there. Just once.”  
“Does André know?” What happened with Dupuis is something she never talks about, not much. He suspects she talks about it more to Konstin who knew him, than she does to anyone else. But as to whether or not she’s told her fiancé—  
“He knows about Edouard. I couldn’t agree to marry him until he knew. He understands.”  
Well. At least that’s that out in the open. “Does he know about you wanting to go back?”  
She meets his eye, and shakes her head, ever so slightly. “I haven’t told him yet. He’d want to come with me but—“  
“But you don’t want him to go.”  
And her voice is small as she whispers, “he never knew him.”  
Antoine nods, and his throat tightens. If it had been Konstin, if he could ever have been with someone else after Konstin, would he bring him to his grave? Or would he go alone?  
(Would he be alive to go at all? Would his own heart not just stop if it had been Konstin?)  
“We’ll go with you.” Konstin’s voice is groggy, sleep-roughened, and he groans as he straightens himself in his chair, blinking. Antoine reaches over and takes his hand, squeezes it lightly. “If you want us to.”  
Antoine wants to protest, wants to keep Konstin away from back there, from all that happened. It’s not that long since he couldn’t sleep for the nightmares, and the razor scars are still so sharp on his arms even though it’s been three years and more (three years, five months, and eleven days) since he—when he—since That Night. Going back there might only set him off, might be too full of reminders, might only make him worse. And he’s been doing so well this last year.  
But if he wants to go... If he thinks he can handle it... It might be good for him, if he’s sure he wants to face it.  
And it would be cruel to let Marguerite go alone.  
Antoine swallows, and nods, and Konstin squeezes his hand back, understanding passing silently between them, as they turn their gazes to Marguerite.  
Her eyes well with tears, and she nods.

* * *

That is how they find themselves, in mid-May with the flowers in bloom and the trees in full leaf, casting the graveyard behind the old château in shade. It’s smaller now, shrunk from what it was, and Konstin stands by the gate, leaning on his cane, too breathless to gather himself to go in.  
Marguerite, once they got here, couldn’t be stopped. Her face was pale, hidden by her hat with its little veil, and when they reached the graveyard she stood a little straighter and nodded emphatically to herself before striding in. Konstin was too frozen to follow her, too numb, and Antoine stood with him a moment, hesitating, until Konstin nodded and waved him on to follow Marguerite.  
“I’ll be along in a minute,” he whispered, and Antoine squeezed his arm, and followed his sister.  
He swallows hard as he watches them walk on.  
It’s almost more than he can think about, that this is the hospital where he almost died, that this is the graveyard that he could have been buried in. That this is the graveyard that Dupuis is buried in, and not just Dupuis but so many of the other men under him too. This graveyard, this soil, these timber crosses because they haven’t consolidated them all yet, haven’t moved all of the bodies though some of the families have come and brought their dead away, to be closer to home even though this is where their spirits are bound to linger, where they last drew breath.  
They got here in time. In another two months, the last of them will have been moved out, and even now there is work going on in other parts of the graveyard. But this is the sacred place, where it all happened, and it would not be the same, going to see Dupuis anywhere else.  
Konstin draws a deep breath to steady himself, and nods.  
He’s gotten this far. He owes it to Dupuis to go the rest of the rest of the way, and to his other men left here, still here.  
He wraps his coat tighter around himself, and steps forward.  
It’s slow progress, the ground still rough, his leg aching worse than ever as if by being back here it has remembered being wounded, remembers when it was fresh and half torn apart. Out of the side of his eye he catches names that conjure faces, flashes of uniforms, of faint smiles. DeTamble, one of the fastest hands he ever saw to clean a rifle. Beaulieu, who made some of the strongest coffee Konstin ever tasted. Leblanc, who should have been a stretcher-bearer because his father was a surgeon and he knew all about dressings but he still insisted on fighting. Noir, whose French was accented, faintly British, and if he was eighteen that was all. Konstin always suspected that he was the runaway younger son of a English Lord wearing a different name, but he never got the chance to ask. More names, on and on. Chastain. Dubois. Mercier. De Stacpoole, youngest son of an older brother killed early in the war. More and more and more, all wounded, all killed, under his orders.  
Under the orders he was forced to give.  
(Not my fault. Not my fault.)  
He stops, takes a deep breath to compose himself, and carries on, averting his eyes from the names.  
And there is Marguerite before him, leaning against Antoine, Antoine’s arm around her shoulders so there must be Dupuis, where Dupuis lies, has lain for almost nine years now. Nine damn years, since he caught Konstin’s gaze before they went over the top, since he gave the slightest nod. Since they last shared a cigarette. Nine years in this place that has tried so hard to forget, that has tried to shed its dead off to other places but it can never forget, not now, not evermore. Everything that happened here is tied to the land, is bedded in it, in the soil, in the trees, in the air, and they can move the bodies, can take down the wooden crosses, can finish turning back the château to what it was before, but it will never be enough, will never wipe the memories away.  
And it should never wipe the memories away.  
He stops beside Marguerite, and swallows, and her hand takes his, squeezes it. Antoine nods to him from her other side, and now, at last, he looks down at the cross before him.

_Capitaine Edouard Dupuis_.  
He can’t read the date, it all blurring before him, and he leans against Marguerite, her arm coming around his waist.  
He swallows, and closes his eyes.

 


	14. Everyone, 1919-1928

Anja marries within four months of the end of the war. No sooner was the Armistice in place and Konstin recovering from his pneumonia, than Valentin De Courcy went to Raoul to ask his permission. And Raoul looked at this young man sitting in the chair across from him, and hid his smile in his glass of cognac. It felt like only yesterday that he was the same eager young man hoping to marry Christine, but of course circumstances were vastly different and it was another seventeen years before he got there. He sipped his brandy, set the glass down and took De Courcy’s hand.  
“I would be honored for you to marry my daughter.”  
It was a frosty morning in early March, dry and clear but cold, when Anja De Chagny became Anja De Courcy, and as the bride kissed the groom, Konstin stood there in the first pew, Émile’s hand steadying on his arm, and pretended that there were not tears in his eyes to see his baby sister all grown up.  
Barely nine months later, there are tears in everyone’s eyes as they wait for the first cry of a new baby. Raoul smokes a cigar in the parlour with the air of one who has been through all of this before, and thinks of Nadir once upon a time on a night like this. Val sits trembling in his chair, wishing he could be as calm as Raoul, and listens to the halting pacing of Konstin in the other room, the cursing when he trips over something, and the soft voice that belongs to Émile soothing him.  
Their hearts stall, and Konstin hobbles back in, Émile right behind him, when the door clicks open, and Christine smiles at them all.  
“It’s a girl,” she says, and Val half-rises from his chair.  
“And Anja?”  
“Tired, but well.”  
And in a laugh of delight, Val almost knocks Konstin off his feet with a hug. Raoul and Christine’s eyes meet, and they share a smile that whispers of happiness and memories.  
And so little Freyja De Courcy, with a head of fair hair, becomes the first of a new generation. And when Konstin holds his tiny goddaughter close, he thinks of the war that brought her parents together, and hopes that she never has to know something so terrible.

* * *

When Guillaume marries Isabel, two years later, Freyja has been joined by a little brother, Victor. Guillaume is fighting a smile, looking at his two baby cousins, and thinking that in eight months they’ll be joined by one of his, though he’s kept Isabel’s confidence and hasn’t breathed a word to anyone yet, not even to his mother. But he has more than enough practice at keeping secrets. He’s safeguarded the secret of what Konstin and Antoine are to each other for longer than he cares to remember.  
Isabel herself was a secret for the best part of a year. He met her in the days after the war ended. She was a nurse in the hospital where some of his men were, and when he visited them his eye was caught by this pretty little dark-haired thing, but he feigned indifference and it was only at the end of his visit, assured that everything was as well as it could be, that he asked her if she wished to join him for a drink.  
And she almost refused him. But there was something about him, something about how he stood, about how his greatcoat was wrapped around him, about how the stern cut of his features softened when he spoke quietly to the wounded, and softened in a different way when he smiled at her, that made her say yes.  
When, on the eve of his return to Paris, he learned that she had been a ballet dancer before everything, he almost proposed then and there. But Guillaume has never been one to do anything in haste, and that is one of the reasons she loves him.  
So when, in December 1921, they marry, it is something they are wholly ready for. And Isabel does not miss the grin that twitches at Guillaume’s lips, but she does take great pleasure in kissing it off his face.

* * *

It is June 1926 when Marguerite De Chagny becomes Marguerite Martin. She has slept better in the month since she made the trip to Edouard’s grave than in the whole of the eight years and eight months before it. There was a time she thought she’d never recover, when she was sure he’d haunt her until her dying day, but while the pain still lingers, still catches her off-guard every now and then with sudden sharpness, it has dulled with time, grown faded, and sometimes she is not certain it even happened at all. Sometimes it feels as if the whole time she was in that hospital was a terrible recurring dream that she used to have once. And while she still sometimes dreams of it, still sometimes wakes convinced it is Amélie’s hand on her shoulder to tell her of a convoy of ambulances, it is only the memory of Edouard, now, that truly remains from all that happened.  
Antoine came to her late last night. She was thinking of André, thinking of how, for all either of them can remember, he might have passed through her care after he was gassed, after he earned the scars he tries so hard to hide, after he lost most of his sight. In another world, she might have fallen in love with him then, when his wounds were fresh, when his lungs were still filled with fluid, and it was such a strange thought, that it might have been a slip of fate that she met Edouard first and not André, and she was just starting to feel unsettled over it when there was the soft knock on her bedroom door, and Antoine stepped in.  
“Konstin ordered me out of the house,” he said, smiling at her, and she knew it was only partly a lie. “He convinced himself that there was something not quite right in your first dance, so he’s doing some re-working. Apparently my comments that it’s all in his head were most unwelcome.”  
She stifled a laugh as she sat up, and he closed the door behind him. “Did he throw the bow at you again?”  
Antoine’s smile faltered. “It just missed my head. Then I told him his aim was very poor.”  
“You’re such a critic.”  
“It’s what I do best.”  
The bed dipped as he settled on the edge of it, and lay his hand over hers. And for a long time they sat in silence, the soft ticking of the clock the only thing other than their breathing.  
“Edouard would be very happy for you,” he whispered eventually, and her breath caught in her throat. “I only—I met him a few times, a good few times, when I was going to see Konstin. We never really spoke, but there was something about him. I liked him even though I didn’t really know him.” He stops, and leans closer to her, his voice soft, softer even than at Edouard’s grave, softer, perhaps, than any time in the last nine years, when he murmurs, “There were a lot of things that I didn’t used to believe in before the war, but I think—and I wouldn’t be surprised, that maybe he—maybe he is the one who sent André into your life.”  
Her throat was too tight to speak, her thoughts too frozen, and her lips were numb as she whispered, “Do you think?”  
Antoine squeezed her fingers. “If Konstin’s father could lead me across No Man’s Land, I think—I think we have no idea the power the dead may hold over us. And the things they might do for us.”  
She couldn’t help it. She couldn’t help the tears that came, her disconcerting thoughts from earlier and the ache in her chest all conspiring with Antoine’s words, and he rocked her gently, as if she were a child, whispering to her that he was sorry if he upset her, sorry if he said too much, but she shook her head and told him that it wasn’t that, it wasn’t that at all.  
And now she walks down the aisle, towards André waiting at the altar, and Raoul is on her arm because her father is too frail, and just before she reaches the top, just before she reaches her fiancé, she swallows and thinks of a man she loved once, who she loves still though she lost him so long ago, and thanks him for being a part of her life, and for all that he’s done for her.

* * *

When, eventually, Émile marries, it is October 1928. Katerina is a former chorus girl, and his choice of bride only causes a mild stir outside the family. The De Chagnys, after all, were always known for being involved with people that would otherwise be considered beneath their station, and there are more than enough rumours around his elder half-brother and the romantic entanglements of other members of the family that anything he might ever do is already overshadowed.  
It is not that Émile is unaware of the things that people say about him and his family. It is more that he has elected not to care. If something is not illegal, then why should it concern anyone? He cannot bring himself to care about people frowning on the choices of him and those he cares about when those very same people frowned on his father marrying his mother once upon a time, and thus have frowned on him for his very existence his whole life.  
It is why, when it comes to the wedding photo for his side of the family, he insists on it including his whole family, and not simply his brother and sister and parents.  
The photographer grumbles over it, but Émile holds his chin high and eyes him in the defiant way Philippe taught him once upon a time, and the man has no choice but to go ahead.  
And so it is that three generations of the family are immortalized in a photograph that is copied and shared across six houses. In the centre Émile is standing beside Katerina, and his smile is proud and a touch devil-may-care. In front of him Christine sits beside Anja, the folds of whose dress are artfully arranged to hide her growing belly, hiding the third child that is yet a secret from the wider world. Marguerite is beside her, two blonde toddlers on her knee, her war-scarred husband’s hand on her shoulder. Unknown to her, André had leaned in and asked Val to guide him to look in the right place for the camera. His eyes have been troubling him more than usual, so he’s wearing dark glasses to ease the irritation, and they become him wonderfully but they are anything but a help to his vision. Val is more than happy to help him, and he can’t help smiling to think of all the dear people that have come into his life because of Anja.  
Philippe is sitting at Christine’s other side, the best part of the way to ninety years old, both hands firmly holding his cane, Sorelli sitting a little closer to him than the conventions of a married couple in a photo would generally allow, and beside her is Isabel, a third baby in her arms and Guillaume looking more than a little proud of himself standing behind her.  
Raoul stands tall beside Émile, and though he is well in his sixties he is just as distinguished as ever, his hand on Christine’s shoulder. And beside him is Konstin, just as gaunt as he has ever been but his eyes are bright with Antoine at his side (and Antoine’s hand in his, discreetly out of view of the camera).  
And sitting on the floor, looking for all the world like royalty, are Freyja and Victor, and Guillaume’s elder two, Jean and August. They know nothing of all that their parents went through, their aunts and uncles and cousins, but a time will come when they will, when they will know all that and a whole lot more, and looking at the photo framed over the fireplace, Christine only hopes that they will not learn such things for a good long time yet.  
But this is her family, and whatever trials lie ahead matter not now. Not when she has them.  
And it is thanks to Erik, really. All thanks to Erik. If Erik had not trained her voice, then Raoul might not have noticed her all those years ago, might not have remembered her. And if it were not for Erik she would not have Konstin, would not have had Nadir and Darius by her side. Everything she has she owes to Erik, and she closes her eyes, and sighs, and knows that somewhere out there he is watching over her still, like he always has. Like he always will.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Up next: A departure, February 1918


End file.
